Introducing The Irreverent Lawyer

I am pleased to introduce Legal Watchdog readers to The Irreverent Lawyer—a gun-slinging civil attorney out west who brilliantly criticizes, among other things, mandatory state bar associations and continuing legal education (CLE) requirements.  (And he does it with wonderfully illustrated posts.)  Now, I always knew that, notwithstanding my state bar’s hyper-positive spin, I wasn’t getting anything for my nearly-$500 check that I sign every year.  And I always knew that after taking most CLEs I was frustrated and drained of money, time, and energy.  But I was never angry about any of this until I started reading some of his posts. 

This post, Spin Doctors, Sock Puppets, and the Cost to Practice Law, includes a nice ranking of the most expensive state bar associations.  Surprise!  Wisconsin is ninth in the U.S.—and now eighth, after the state of Washington voted to dramatically slash its bar dues.  And what does the Wisconsin state bar do?  It creates studies that tell us what the law blogs like Inside the Law School Scam and Outside the Law School Scam have been telling us for years: nearly half of new lawyers can’t find law jobs and those who do are afraid to practice law because they haven’t been trained how.

Wisconsin lawyers will also remember the economic study on the practice of law that the state bar tries to sell us every year.  (I always wondered why anyone would read this, let alone pay for it.)  Well, this type of study is the stuff of state bars across the country, as The Irreverent Lawyer discusses in this post, Skipping the Bar’s Annual Butt-Numb-A-Thon and I’m Still Not Paying for Their Report.

Finally, in this post, Suicidal Lawyers?: State Bar Reacts Like Usual, he discusses how unfounded media claims about lawyer suicides cause knee-jerk reactions from state bars in the form of mandatory CLE programs on mental health!  Actually, it was this topic of mental health that introduced me to the Irreverent Lawyer.  He saw, liked, and reposted my earlier work on this topic, which you can find in his Suicidal Lawyers post, and on The Dog, by clicking this link.  [Spoiler Alert!  The Wisconsin Bar has an ironic recommendation to cure lawyer anxiety caused by not having money or the know-how to practice law: do free, volunteer legal work for real people with real legal problems.]

Welcome to Wisconsin, Irreverent Lawyer!